Denver ready to unify schools

MENIFEE - In his re-election bid last year for the Perris Union
High School District board, John Denver said he supported shifting
Paloma Valley High into the Menifee Union School District, but
didn't think the timing was right in late 2005.

He and another incumbent ultimately lost their seats to two
challengers who supported dissolving the high school district.
Dissolving the district would result in the transfer of the high
schools, including Paloma Valley, to their respective elementary
school districts, thereby unifying them from kindergarten through
12th grade.

Now, Denver, who is running for a seat on the Menifee district
board, says he believes the time is right to initiate the three- to
five-year unification process.

Denver's change of philosophy regarding unification is not an
about-face just to return to Menifee-area politics, he says.

Rather, he said it's a reaction to the behavior of the new
Perris Union High board, which he contends is "dysfunctional" and
is "micromanaging." The Perris district governs Paloma Valley in
Menifee, along with Perris High and Pinacate Middle School.

"It's time to dissolve that district," said Denver, 59, of
Menifee.

Members of that board have disagreed over the district's course,
frustrating members of the administration. Superintendent Dennis
Murray is retiring in early 2007. His top deputy, Barry Kayrell,
recently resigned, citing the board's decision to consider
candidates outside the district rather than promote him.

"The superintendent now feels it's necessary to leave. Almost
every top administrator is either looking or considering looking
for a new job," Denver said. "I believe more staff is going to
leave. It'll be chaos."

Denver, a real estate broker who is married and has grown
children, believes the Menifee board would benefit from his
decade-plus experience on the Perris Union High board -- a group
that occasionally dealt with the elementary districts that send
their high school-age students to Perris district schools. Those
districts would need to approve unification to allow the shift of
Paloma into the Menifee school district.

One of the roadblocks to unification thus far has been that not
every affected elementary district has a high school in its
attendance boundaries. The high school district doesn't have
campuses within the Romoland or Nuview elementary district
boundaries.

The Perris district is scheduled to open Heritage High in
Romoland in August. There are no plans to build a high school in
Nuview's area, which encompasses Nuevo. Denver believes, however,
that Nuview will have enough new homes within the next several
years to support a high school of its own.

Heritage High, Perris Union officials have said, will house
students from Romoland and Menifee. It's a plan Denver favors -- so
much so that he proposes sending a good chunk of Menifee-area high
school students there even if the Menifee district absorbs Paloma
Valley.

Some Menifee-area students would attend Heritage High to ease
the congestion at Paloma Valley, which already is over capacity and
is experiencing 8 percent to 10 percent gains in enrollment each
year -- that is, until a second high school is built in Menifee, he
said.